If you are a professional office document writer, then you know how important it is to have accurate and up-to-date author information. If you do not have accurate and up-to-date author information, your documents may not meet the standards of quality that your clients and colleagues expect. To add or remove authors from an office document, you first need to determine the name of the author. To do this, you will need to identify the author’s name in one of the following ways:

  1. In the text of an office document, use the author’s name as it appears in the text itself. For example, if an office document includes a table of contents, then all pages in that table must include an author’s name.
  2. In footnotes or endnotes, use the author’s name as it appears in those citations. For example, if an office document includes a footnote that cites a source from another source, then that source’s full name must be cited in that footnote as well (e.g., “Fowler,” “The New York Times”).
  3. In any other places where an author is mentioned within an office document (e.g., in headings or tables), use only one word for each author: “the,” “him,” “her,” etc. For example, “the authors” would be used for all three types of authors mentioned above (the writer(s), the source(s), and their respective sources).

By default, the author of a document is set to the user name you entered when you installed Word. However, you can change the user name, thus changing the main author, as well as add authors to or remove authors from a document.

NOTE: We used Word 2013 to illustrate this feature.

To add an author to a document, click the “File” tab.

Make sure the “Info” screen is the active backstage screen. In the “Related People” section of the “Info” screen, notice that the user name from the “Summary” information is listed as the author. To add another author, click “Add an author” under the user name.

Enter the name of the author you want to add in the edit box. If you have any contacts in your address book, names matching what you are typing display in a popup menu. If the person’s name is available, you can choose it from the list.

To finish adding the author, click on any free space on the “Info” screen outside of the author edit box. The additional author displays in the “Related People” section.

You can also add authors by editing the “Author” property in the “Summary” information. Click the “Properties” button on the “Info” screen and select “Advanced Properties” from the drop-down menu.

On the “Summary” tab of the dialog box that displays, notice that the author you added displays in the “Author” edit box. You can add additional authors in this edit box, putting a semicolon between each author’s name.

To remove an author on the “Info” screen, right-click on the author’s name and select “Remove Person” from the popup menu.

You can also use the “Document Panel” to add and remove authors. Click the “Properties” button on the “Info” screen and select “Show Document Panel” from the drop-down menu.

The “Document Panel” opens above the currently open document. Add and remove authors using the “Author” edit box on the panel the same way we did on the “Summary” tab on the “Advanced Properties” dialog box earlier in this article. Remember to put semicolons between the author names.

You can also add and remove authors in the same manner in Excel and PowerPoint.